N.H. makes primary date official

New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner on Wednesday declared victory in his quadrennial battle of wills over the presidential nominating calendar.

Gardner, during a press conference at the state capitol in Concord, formalized Jan. 10 as New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary date.

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“It’s my honor and privilege to say that the tradition of the New Hampshire primary will live on,” Gardner said.

The selection was no surprise, as Gardner made clear it was his intention all along — despite bluffs that he might jump ahead of Iowa into December or schedule the vote on a day of the week other than Tuesday.

“I was sort of on the edge of a cliff,” Gardner said of his threats to move the primary into December. “I was hoping that if I had to move, that there would be a puddle of water to jump into if necessary.”

His foes at the Republican National Committee and in rogue early-nominating states now have four years to plot strategy on how to keep him in line. Gardner has been setting the primary date and fighting to keep it first for 35 years.

With Garnder’s Jan. 10 selection, the GOP primary calendar is complete. Iowa will hold its caucuses Jan. 3, followed a week later by New Hampshire. South Carolina will hold its primaries Jan. 21, and Florida — the unwelcome entry into the early-state club — will vote Jan. 31.

Nevada will hold caucuses Feb. 4, but only after the state’s GOP suffered a total capitulation to Gardner. Nevada Republicans, awarded one of the four coveted early-state slots by the Democratic and Republican national committees, tried legally tethering their caucus date to the Saturday after the New Hampshire primary. But Gardner first refused to discuss scheduling strategy, then threatened a December primary and encouraged a proposed candidate boycott of Nevada.

On Oct. 22, Nevada caved.

Jon Huntsman, who boycotted a presidential debate in Nevada out of support for New Hampshire, welcomed the announcement. “I look forward to competing in this great American tradition — the ‘First in the Nation’ primary — on Jan. 10. Bill Gardner has done an excellent job protecting this sacred status and I have been proud to stand with him since Day One in support of New Hampshire’s rightful place in this process,” he said in a statement.

Despite the drama over the date, Gardner said at least four cycles — 1984, 1996, 2000 and 2008 — were more difficult to maintain New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation status.

“I thought after the last cycle that we would not face this again,” he said.

With the exception of nonbinding caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota and a for-show election in Missouri that the state Legislature has been unable to cancel, there are no other contests in February until Arizona and Michigan vote Feb. 28.

This year’s Super Tuesday falls on March 6, when Georgia, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia hold primaries. Idaho and North Dakota will hold caucuses.

If the nominee is not decided by then, the next significant date is April 1. Per RNC rules, states that award delegates before April 1 must do so proportionally, in theory limiting the influence of winning any particular state. States that award delegates after April 1 can be winner-take-all.

This is true for all pre-April 1 states except for Florida, which is already being punished by the RNC for holding its primary well before the approved March 6 date for the non-carve-out states. Florida Republicans wrote their rules to make the state winner-take-all, and because the RNC has already punished the Florida GOP by stripping half its delegates for the date maneuver, there is nothing the RNC can do to stop the state from awarding all 50 of its remaining delegates to the primary’s winner.